The Can of Worms called Creation and/or Evolution

[Gold Winger]

"Yes, but science actually works."

 

Does it or is it simply a convienient way to explain away how fairies and trolls are controlling the universe?

 

[packsaddle]

OGE, the Malibu SS 396, remember it well. I can still feel the G's. Another fav was the 66 GTO. In college I met one of the original Shelby 427 Cobras. I have been forever since intoxicated by those exhaust fumes and I'll follow it anywhere.

So what do I have now, a 67 IH 1200B 4WD 3/4ton pickup..rust bucket and ugly as that mythical place. But it clears a path on the highway.

[OldGreyEagle]

Actually

 

http://www.racerchicks.com/racers/muldowney.html

 

Ms Muldowney was the Drag Queen!

[packsaddle]

Oh baby, oh baby!

[Gunny2862]

I keep forgetting, is it lightbulbs(darksuckers) or bicycles that are irreducibly complex?

 

Look, science is in fact a belief system.

In a truly non-empirical sense none of us KNOW that we are experiencing the same reality as everyone else, if we are sensing reality at all. Science seems to be giving us a great sense of repeatability and correlation of results for similar experiments. But, we can only look at the results and BELIEVE that their similarity implies certain observations about the universe.

Some overzealous folks turn those most repeatable observations into "truths" or "facts" but any Scientist who tells you that they aren't winding up with more questions than answers is most likely doing bad science.

And any good scientist will leave open the possibility that the observations MAY be founded on an incomplete understanding of what is really happening and that an alternate theory may one day lead to a better explanation.

So this idea that Science has all of the answers doesn't wash anyway - Scientific method MAY be the best empirical way to investigate what can be known but to ascribe "truth" to Science is also implying Science as a Worldview thus making it a "religion".

 

I like my Religion and my Science to agree wherever possible. When it clearly isn't happening, I usually figure I don't fully understand something on one side or the other. Probably more common a problem than I might like to admit...

[Beavah]

If your point is that science is ill-equipped to advance human ethics, I tend to agree. So why load that responsibility on science?

 

Load that responsibility on science?

 

Science assumes that responsibility when its Believers dismiss other fields of human knowledge and inquiry as being "just made up stories" or the same as readin' goat entrails.

 

I think yeh need both fields of knowledge and inquiry to have a whole, functioning society and da ongoin' development of mankind. Science's stories about mysterious, action-at-a-distance, invisible "forces." Religion's stories about mysterious, action-within-our-soul, invisible God.

 

Beavah

 

 

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Beavah writes:

"If your point is that science is ill-equipped to advance human ethics, I tend to agree. So why load that responsibility on science? "

 

Load that responsibility on science?

 

Science assumes that responsibility when its Believers dismiss other fields of human knowledge and inquiry as being "just made up stories" or the same as readin' goat entrails.

 

That's ridiculous on several levels.

 

First, "reading goat entrails" IS religion. It doesn't matter that it doesn't happen to be yours. Do you think eating the flesh of a cracker-turned-god is eminently sensible? And religious stories ARE "made up stories," unless you're going to continue down the path of special pleading and say YOUR religion's stories are genuine, but the Egyptian sun god Ra didn't really have a falcon's head and didn't really exist.

 

Second, MY denigration of religion is mine, not science's. If your religion doesn't make any claims about the material universe and sticks to mythology of an afterlife, science won't care (but *I* will still point out you're making up crap). Science only addresses what can be observed, and no afterlife can be observed, at least so far.

 

Science doesn't bend to your misunderstandings of it. It doesn't directly address human ethics because that's not what science is.

 

Science's stories about mysterious, action-at-a-distance, invisible "forces." Religion's stories about mysterious, action-within-our-soul, invisible God.

 

And there's your usual equivocation. Reading goat entrails is a perfectly legitimate religious method to glean knowledge; just because YOU find it ridiculous doesn't change that. If you want "religion" to be respected, why don't you respect an ancient practice like reading goat entrails? Or are your own religion's practices familiar, while reading goat entrails is not, so you simply discard that as a method of gaining knowledge?

 

Guess what? Plenty of people regard ALL religions the same way. If you can disparage reading goat entrails, why can't other people disparage what THEY see as absurd? Or are you the font of all "true" religion now?

 

If you want YOUR religious views respected, why don't you respect reading goat entrails?

[Gold Winger]

(This message has been edited by a staff member.)

[evmori]

Science is a method to find out what actually happens in the universe; religion are people making up stories to fill up their ignorance.

 

And with all the knowledge scientists have, they still don't have all the answers.

 

What stories are made up Merlyn? Don't even bother with the parables because those truly were stories to get a point across!

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Of course science doesn't have all the answers, Ed. Having all the answers and being infallible are the usual rubric of religions, not science. Being incomplete or even wrong at times is expected in science, that's one of the ways it improves knowledge.

 

If you want an example of made-up stories, how about the creation of the earth. A lot of people think the earth is only about 10,000 years old, even though the only basis for this are bronze-age myths.

 

 

 

(fix typo)(This message has been edited by Merlyn_LeRoy)

[packsaddle]

Hi Ed,

"And with all the knowledge scientists have, they still don't have all the answers."

 

Whew! Man, I was beginning to worry I soon wouldn't have anything to do. But seriously, here are some made-up stories, just a few:

 

Almost anything from the Book of Mormon, especially the space-alien thing...I consider this to be made-up. Yeah, you're right, I still can't prove a negative so it's just my opinion. It's a fact, though, that there's no physical evidence whatsoever to support their claims.

 

Here's another:

I attended a church a few years back and the sermon was really a rant against the pro-choice view. The minister related to the congregation a familiar story, you can still find it online:

http://www.abortiontv.com/Misc/TheFetusMay.htm

 

Here's the general version: "If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already (some versions say 5 kids, some say 14), three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, (some versions of this story say that one of the siblings was in a mental institution) and she had syphilis (some versions say tuberculosis and some also say that the father was sick with sniffles), would you recommend that she have an abortion?

If you say 'yes', then you get the gleeful response "Then you just killed Beethoven!""

 

Anyway, the congregation was in complete agreement. They KNEW this to be true. Wrong! It is a complete fabrication and CAN be proven false. A totally made-up story that many religious people KNOW to be true today.

 

Another:

The Noachian flood is, in my opinion, a wonderful story but completely mythical. It is wonderful because it shows up in so many diverse cultures. But there is simply no evidence whatsoever for it. There simply isn't enough water on the planet to do what is claimed in that story. Again, I can't prove a negative so it's just my opinion.

 

Another:

Jonah and the whale. Just as valid as the Pinnochio and the whale story.

 

More:

All the creation myths. All of them. Made up to fill the gaps. Completely understandable human need to have an answer...but made up - in my opinion.

 

[evmori]

If you want an example of made-up stories, how about the creation of the earth. A lot of people think the earth is only about 10,000 years old, even though the only basis for this are bronze-age myths.

 

 

What about the creation of earth? Oh you probably think it took longer that seven days. By your definition of a day, sure! But do you know what God's definition of a day is? I don't. And we really don't know how old the earth is or how it was created now doe we!

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

No Ed, *you* don't really know how old the earth is. It's just over 4.5 billion years old.

[evmori]

Well excuse me!

 

At one time it was thought to be 10,000 years old. That was based on the information & technology available at the time. We now think the earth is "around" 4.5 billion years old. That is based on the information & technology available now. In another 50 years, how does anyone know we won't think the earth is 1 trillion years old or 1 million years old based on the information & technology available? We don't. And how do we know the earth was not created as is stated in the Bible? We don't.

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Ed writes:

At one time it was thought to be 10,000 years old. That was based on the information & technology available at the time.

 

That was not, however, based on the scientific method.

 

Your example is also very myopic; other religious myths have very different ages for the earth.

 

We now think the earth is "around" 4.5 billion years old. That is based on the information & technology available now.

 

That estimate IS based on the scientific method, not on religious myths.

 

You may as well argue that people used to think the earth was flat, based on the technology then, but now think it's round, so in the future we may think it's a cylinder. You're comparing a nonscientific statement to a scientific one.